Halpern's Twitter feed joined 'Dear Girls Above Me' and 'Shh ... Don’t Tell Steve' as TV fodder. Only 'Shit' made it on the air.

In 2010, in its first issue, THR noted that tweets were being turned into television. Five years later, Justin Halpern, the user behind the Twitter page that spawned the short-lived CBS sitcom, fondly writes about the flop that killed the trend.

This story first appeared in the Nov. 27 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

In 2009, When I sold my Shit My Dad Says Twitter feed to CBS, the most common response was, "They bought a Twitter feed? Hollywood is completely out of anything resembling an original idea." (The second most common was, "Fuck you." There was a random guy who just tweeted me "fuck you" every day for a year, the longest relationship I've had aside from my wife.) If I'm being honest, I would have agreed with all of the above if it hadn't been my Twitter feed.

Now that I've worked as a TV writer for six years, I've come to realize why networks were eager to buy my feed. Writers and broadcast networks have a specific relationship. Think of them as a middle-aged married couple who has sex once a week, mostly in the missionary position, then rolls over and cruises on their iPads. Both parties might like to try something new, but nobody wants to make a move that ends up going so badly that you can't look at each other in the morning.

But then the broadcast networks see writers and cable networks fucking in all kinds of crazy, nasty ways, and the broadcast networks think, "You know, I don't want to have sex like that, but I would be interested in spicing it up a bit. Maybe next time we have sex, I'd like to try having a finger stuck up my asshole." And in 2009, with Twitter starting to burst out, Shit My Dad Says was that finger.

If you remember, Shit My Dad Says was not a very good TV show. The blame lies mostly on me, because when you're trying something a little kinky, you have to have confidence in what you're doing, otherwise it just ends with everyone going, "What if we just went to bed?"

After the failure of the show, many of the Twitter feeds that had been bought that pilot season died. And during the next few years, Twitter-to-TV pilot purchases went away, but Twitter did not. It became a great place to find talented writers and performers like Megan Amram, Jen Statsky and Rob Delaney. So the Shit My Dad Says show may have ruined one sexual maneuver, but there are plenty of people on Twitter who have ably done all sorts of dirty shit with the networks that worked out well for everyone.

Justin Halpern is the author of two New York Times best-selling books and a TV writer hoping for a show that gets a second season.

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And in other looks back to our first issue in 2010 ...

Leo's Still Waiting for His Oscar

Poor Leonardo DiCaprio? In 2010, the actor had two splashy performances, in Shutter Island and Inception, prompting THR to speculate in its first magazine whether he would compete against himself for an Oscar nomination. Neither ended up delivering a nom, much less his first win. Now, five years later, he's got five nominations (including for 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street), and he's back as a contender for The Revenant. Is this finally his year?

Turns Out No One Wanted to Buy Designer 3D Glasses

There's a limit to how much fans of 3D movies can be upsold. In THR's first issue, tech specialist Carolyn Giardina wrote about chic new shades offered by top designers Gucci and Calvin Klein for viewing the immersive format. Glassware "is something people like to personalize," touted DreamWorks Animation's Jeffrey Katzenberg, who helped test Oakley's offering. Since then, Gucci has discontinued the $225 eyewear, but several small com­panies still produce styled 3D glasses for much lower prices ($30).